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Doping among Dominican baseball prospects ‘epidemic’

Major League Baseball has made changes since a 2005 Star investigation revealed rampant doping in the Dominican Republic, but the problem still persists.

Eduardo Ferreira, president of the Academia de Beisbol in Santiago, Dominican Republic, is tired of watching impoverished prospects fall victim to unscrupulous independent coaches, called buscones, in his country.
(handout photo)

Eduardo Ferreira has watched a host of honest, hard-working prospects leave his Dominican Republic baseball academy in favour of corrupt coaches who promise lucrative major league signings.

It never fails — young, impoverished players are manipulated by independent coaches, referred to as buscones, and sucked into a steroid-ridden culture where a few “supplements” hopefully, but rarely, equal millions of dollars.

“That’s the reality, it does happen, there’s no question about it,” said Ferreira, president of the Academia de Beisbol in Santiago. “We don’t go that route. That’s probably why we haven’t signed a lot of players.”

Since Major League Baseball began testing minor-leaguers in 2005, its Dominican Summer League has consistently accounted for the majority of positive tests. Advocates want MLB to find more ways to battle the “epidemic” after 12 of the 13 major-leaguers suspended last week in the Biogenesis scandal were of Latino descent, eight of them from the Dominican Republic.

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A 2005 Star investigation found a black-market system in the Dominican in which prospects are treated like cattle by unregulated buscones collecting a percentage of any signing bonus. MLB has tried to control the problem, but it remains rampant.

Dominican prospects are not eligible for the MLB draft, and can sign with clubs — most of which operate baseball academies in the country — once they are 16 years old. These early signings often come with lucrative bonuses, sometimes worth millions of dollars.

“There’s a lot of pressure on these kids,” said Ferreira, noting that a signing bonus worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is more than an average Dominican family would earn in a lifetime. “When you’re 13 or 14 years old, that’s a lot to handle.”

MLB, with some success, has discouraged buscones from supplying prospects with steroids, easily bought over the counter at local pharmacies, by implementing random drug testing of top prospects before they sign with a major league club and join its academy.

Implemented in 2010, the effect of the initiative is clear: in 2008, 60 per cent of minor-league players who tested positive were playing in the Dominican Summer League; in 2012, DSL players accounted for just 14 per cent of positive tests.

But that 14 per cent does not include summer league players dropped before the tests or Dominicans playing in other minor leagues. In 2013, summer league players alone have accounted for 26 per cent of suspended players.

This comes even after Dominican minor-leaguers became subject to lengthy suspensions for positive tests; back in 2005, MLB could not suspend them due to the country’s labour laws.

“If I’m going to make millions by putting something in my body, then I’m going to do it. So what if I get suspended 50 games, I just made millions,” Ferreira said of the thought process some players go through. “The alternative is I stay dirt poor.”

A 2009 report by baseball executive Sandy Alderson, appointed to chair a committee reviewing MLB operations in the Dominican, suggested lobbying the country’s government to regulate buscones.

But Ferreira says it’s MLB’s responsibility to rein in the buscones, with whom the clubs and academies deal with regularly. He’d like to see a licensing system put in place for buscones through the academies.

Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America, which has lobbied MLB and the Dominican government to spur change, says the problem persists because MLB turns a blind eye.

“They’ve addressed it, but not to the fullest,” said Mateo. “The buscones know how much leeway they have. It’s not random drug testing. They have a heads-up when the tests are going to come.”

Mateo suspects staff at the MLB academies are in cahoots with shady buscones and alert them when tests are coming so their prospects can be “clean.”

Evidence that Mateo may be right appears in Alderson’s 2009 report, which identified such corruption as a “major issue,” noting that five clubs fired employees for taking kickbacks from buscones.

“They don’t look at these players as being human beings, they look at them as products,” said Mateo. “This is a disease. It’s an epidemic.”

MLB sees it as the Dominican government’s responsibility to control buscones and cites the decreased positive test rate among summer league players as proof its own changes are helping.

“If the MLB truly wanted to curb this, the signing age should be changed, absolutely,” said Ferreira, arguing it should be 18, as it is for Americans. “As long as you continue to expect 16-year-old kids to perform at the level of mature men, then this is not going to go away.”

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